Obama's Big Bet to Nail Romney on Autos

Obama's campaign reportedly spends $25 million in swing states to hit Romney hard on his auto industry comments.

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- President Barack Obama's campaign on Thursday jabbed Mitt Romney on the auto industry in key swing states.

Three new ads were launched in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada, according to The Washington Post,

The spots highlight an auto worker's appreciation that the president saved the industry's thousands of jobs, Obama's explanation of why he felt government intervention was the right decision and how the economy gradually improved after Obama entered office.

"It wasn't just the million jobs that were at stake, it was also part of what built our middle class, creating products stamped with those words 'Made in America,'" Obama says in one ad . "What happened in Detroit can happen in all sorts of communities where when you combine American innovation with the best workers in the world, we can succeed."

David Axelrod, an Obama campaign senior adviser, told reporters that the campaign plans to spend $25 million on ads in May.

The New York Times' electoral map lists eight of the nine states where the campaign released these ads as tossups for the 2012 election.

An interactive map by The Brookings Institute reveals the largest concentrations of American manufacturing activity that affect swing states as being in Chicago (near Wisconsin, which is currently a tossup), Boston (affects New Hampshire), New York (reaches to Pennsylvania), Cleveland and Philadelphia.

The ads come a few days after Romney took credit for the comeback of industry giants General Motors ( GM) and Chrysler.

"My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that's finally what the president did," Romney said Monday . "So I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry's come back."

It's unclear, at least immediately, if Romney will suffer among blue-collar workers for these comments, but Thursday's ad blitz suggests the Obama campaign hopes to capitalize on the claim.